On the night of November 28, 2008, as the siege on Mumbai was painfully winding to a close, a call was made to then external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee from the ‘President of Pakistan’. A lengthy verification process, however, stalled the process, so the caller, according to a story broken by Pakistani newspaper Dawn decided to become Pranab Mukherjee instead and threatened Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari over the phone. This resourceful caller with his impressive list of contacts was none other than Omar Saeed Sheikh. His location: the confines of Hyderabad jail in Pakistan, where his wife had been surreptitiously giving him inputs on the carnage unfolding in Mumbai on his mobile phone.

Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, in his book, described him as a rogue agent who was once recruited by the British spy agency MI6, the international intelligence community is convinced he has the protection of Pakistan’s ISI but with unfailing regularity— ever since he was arrested for kidnapping foreigners in India in 1994 — Omar Saeed Sheikh has been committing audacious acts of terror, crime and guile that have kept him firmly on the list of the world’s most dangerous men.

Prison, clearly, has not been much of a deterrent. Thus, after a brief lull from his prison cell in Karachi—-where he has been on death row for seven years for the killing of American journalist Daniel Pearl—-news was out that it was none other than Omar Sheikh who had almost brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war. Reason: after being informed by his wife about the 26/11 attack in Mumbai, he executed a devious plan of making hoax telephone calls to President Asif Ali Zardari and members of the top defence establishment posing as an enraged Mukherjee.

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